Me Minus You
by shouldbstudying
Summary: Lou has lost a lot of things - the ability to leave her house without being attacked by reporters, the ability to control her tears, the ability to sleep but worse, she has someone she loved. Lou after Will's death and eventually finding her way to Paris. Probably one shot, may continue.


Since... the event, there were several things I had lost or was longer able to do.

I was no longer able to live in the annexe on the weekends. In fact, I wasn't able to go into the annexe without finding myself on the floor in a fit of sobs so that meant that Mum and Dad packed my things for me and unpacked them in my room. No comments came from Treena when she and Thomas slept in the box room those weekends. A single comment could break me.

I was also not able to leave the house without reporters and cameras coming at me. They somehow didn't see the deep set bags beneath my eyes or how my eyes always seemed to be red from tears. They must have missed the way my hair stood up on all sides and how I'd moved from my colourful clothes to the simplest in my cupboard: sweat pants and the loosest jumper in the house. They rushed around me like vultures eating their prey and my complete silence didn't satisfy their cravings.

Similarly, I was not able to watch television. Every channel had a story on the death of a once business-hero. William Traynor, action man, the can-do, will-do man. My heart wrenched every time a story came on and even as the weeks went on, so did the stories. I felt surrounded in my own home. So I avoided the television.

Something else I couldn't do was look at my bookshelf. It was scattered with his things, books and biographies and poems. I couldn't look at them so I settled for staring at my ceiling every day, wishing that this god awful year would end. My Mum pushed therapy and counselling brochures under my bedroom door every day but she never asked me to go to my face so I would scrunch up the balls and throw them at the door in a dramatic rage. _He's not dead, he can't be dead._

Another luxury that I had lost since the event was sleep. My dreams were filled with his face, sometimes in pain and sometimes at peace in a sleep I couldn't shake him from. Sometimes I swear I woke up and smelled him or felt his lips on mine. My nightmares were of shaking his pale, cold body, screaming to wake up. And sometimes they were of the good days - the days spent in the castle or at the concert and they haunted me even more.

Sometimes I dreamt of a life where Will was not in his chair, but he was as he wished he had been: an able-bodied person. In my dreams, he was affectionate and loving and would wake me up by tickling my sides and kissing me. In my dreams, we got married and had a child: a boy that Will promised he'd spend his entire life protecting. In my dreams... We were so in love. But that's all they were: dreams that crushed my already broken heart. Dreams that tried to give me hope that a dead man could come back.

When I avoided sleeping, I stared at the ceiling, just as I did in the day and imagined all the horrible things somebody could witness. Seeing a train roll over, watching a home burn down, seeing somebody get run over by a motorcycle, watching the person you love willingly die... And that was how my life was now. I avoided the letters I'd been sent like they were plague - even the ones in Will's typed manuscript. I couldn't... I just couldn't. Dad encouraged me to see what was in them, as some contained legal documents but I shoved them in my bookcase and pretended they didn't exist.

Perhaps the most horrific problem I faced was I'd lost a friend. God, I'd lost my _best_ friend. Nobody understood me like he had. Nobody could ever possibly understand me like he had. I wanted to wake up and for him to be there, sitting in his chair, watching me as I grumbled about something the shopkeeper had said as I'd bought something that had been on sale or grinning and making a wise-ass joke when I needed cheering up. I'd lost somebody I loved, somebody I'd wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

Patrick and I had never been like that. I'd only dated him because I figured it would make my Mum happy and I wasn't really the person to break things off so it had just... continued. For six years. Patrick had been fine, a little plain and only alright in terms of romance or sex, but he was just someone who I figured I'd settle for. _Who else would I spend my life with?_

And then Will had come into my life and made my life miserable. He'd been rude and dismissive and belittling but he'd been interesting. And somehow we'd been friends who were honest with each other, who didn't handle each other with kitten gloves. And I'd fallen in love with him. God, I didn't even _know_ I'd fallen in love with him. I assumed my love for Patrick was being 'in love' but this type of love was passionate and painful and when I thought of it now, this throttling love that overwhelmed me, it destroyed me.

I like to think that if given just a bit more time... Will could have been convinced out of it. Will would have opened his eyes one day and said, "I want to spend the rest of my long life with you."

But I knew that Will had feared the resentment that may come in a year, or five, or twenty or fifty.

August 13th was the day that destroyed me: I was barely human. I remember when I returned from Switzerland, unsure where to go. I'd walked out of the airport and taken the bus home, knocked on the door, half expecting my mother to tell me that I wasn't her daughter anymore.

But she'd looked at me, the mess I must have been.

"He's gone, Mum," I'd whimpered. "He's really gone." And she'd started crying, wrapping her arms around me. _I love you_ she whispered over and over until I could control my sobs enough to apologise for leaving against her will. But she'd shaken her head and stroked my face.

"I know you had to be there."

I could no longer read the newspaper every morning with Dad - every day there was a new 'interview with victim's friend.' I'd seen Alicia and Rupert in there once and practically gagged. Dad stopped reading the newspaper at home when he'd found me staring at the newspaper on the other side of the table, a photo of Will as a child staring at me in black and white. _You watched me die_ it seemed to scream.

Worse so, was that I couldn't ask Dad how work had been or how Mr Traynor was. He'd made the mistake of telling me Mr Traynor had asked about me and I'd cried for an hour straight. The family tiptoed around me, careful to breathe in my presence. I felt guilty - Mum had guilt, worry and concern etched in every corner of her face. Treena hadn't been so quiet since she was in the womb. Thomas was the only family member who could possibly cheer me up, wrapping his little arms around me every time he saw me and kissing my cheek. He'd resorted to sleeping in my bed with me every weekend - I'd seen Treena's _almost_ bitter expression but she'd covered it with a smile before I could register it.

And that was life. I didn't leave the house in the fear of being attacked with questions about the dead man I loved and I physically couldn't do anything in the house without something reminding me of him. I knew I had to leave, to get away somewhere. But the question of where was a problem. New York? Japan? Paris? I thought of Will, of his happy memories of the cafe in Les Marais. And my decision was made.

"I'm leaving," I told my parents that night. "I'm taking a flight to Paris in the morning." Nobody gasped or asked why or tried to talk me out of it. I almost felt relief in the room.

"That's great for you, sweetie. Do you need any extra money? Do you need a lift to the airport?" my Dad asked as he cut into his meat.

I gaped at him, mouth open. "Ah... Um, no. But thank you." And that was that. I packed the letters and the books that I'd been avoiding, careful not to think about what I was doing too much. I packed what I needed and the next morning at 6am, left to Paris.

I wasn't sure what I expected when I found the street of cobbled stone and happy French people. I almost laughed at how perfect Will's description had been, almost cried when I saw a couple of men ahead of me holding hands. _You were right Will. You're always right._

I sat at the cafe, sipping coffee that tasted far better than the coffee at the Buttered Bun had ever tasted. A plate of croissants sat in front of me and I took in the atmosphere. It had been so long since I'd been outside my house and here I was in Paris, without a single person asking me who Will Traynor was and why I let him die.

It had been six weeks. Six whole weeks since I had heard Will's laugh, since I'd heard his voice or seen his smile. _Oh Will, I miss you._ He would have known what to do now, where to go, who to see. He would have told me to stop being such a mess, to get on with life.

Without even thinking, I picked up the letter with Will's computer writing on it. Will would know what to do, wouldn't he? I held the paper to my face, hoping to be able to smell Will vividly, despite knowing that in the entire process of this being sent to me, it was unlikely he'd ever touched it. I tore open the envelope to Will's familiar hand writing. I felt a lump rise in my throat as my eyes skimmed the writing. I was going to break my promise to myself not to cry.

 _Dear Clark,_

 _I can only hope that if you are reading this, you have forgiven me. I will not be petty in this letter: I will be to the point, as I would have if I had been telling you this in person. I know my death will cause you pain: I naively didn't realise how much pain until our trip to Mauritius where you told me you loved me. I hope you don't regret knowing me - regret_ loving _me. I've left you a substantial amount of money so that even if you wish you had never met me, your life will be better now, than if you hadn't. I hope you know that the last six months, spent with you, were the best of my life. Better than cliff jumping and surfing and sky diving. You and your laugh, your fashion sense... God, those hilariously perfect buns on your head. You were the best thing to ever happen to me. And had it been under any other circumstances, I know I would have been happy with you. But I couldn't do it anymore, Clark. I think you know that._

 _Don't be afraid anymore. Life is not the castle maze. Life is wonderful and an world is endless and you have a hunger for what's there, Clark. I see it and you see it. Live, Clark. Live well. I'll be right beside you, I promise._

 _I love you._

 _\- Will_


End file.
